Pinterest Publishes First Transparency Report

Pinterest only received a dozen data requests from authorities, all from the USA

Pinterest makes public its first Transparency Report

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Pinterest joins the ranks of Internet companies that have published a Transparency Report. While the company hasn’t really been bothered by authorities, it’s still important for it to be honest about the data requests it does receive and that concern Pinterest users.

According to the company, there were only seven warrants and five subpoenas received in the second half of 2013. These were directed to 13 user accounts, an extremely small portion of the tool’s total number of users.

All 12 requests were from agencies in the United States, while 11 of them were issued by local or state agencies.

The company is known for sending users notifications when their information has been requested, unless they are prohibited by law, something that many other Internet companies have been complaining about. In Pinterest’s case, only three of the twelve requests made use of this.

“Every company that stores information – from banks to phone companies to email providers – must respond to requests for that information from folks like law enforcement agencies, courts, and others. We think it’s important that you know about these requests,” Pinterest explained.

Tech companies have been a lot more forthcoming in the past few months, particularly after the entire NSA scandal and have used the situation to leverage a boost in transparency.

While they did receive permission to explain exactly how many secret governmental requests they get from agencies such as the NSA, they were only allowed to do so in batches of 1,000, meaning that only big companies, such as Google, can actually display reports that make any type of sense.